


nostalgia

by boleynqueens



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 15:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6759940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boleynqueens/pseuds/boleynqueens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no times for civilities, so Mary Rose hopes to distract him with amusement, because, she knows, Charles Brandon likes being amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loyaltybindshim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaltybindshim/gifts).



> happy birthday, daniella!

** 2012 **

Mary Rose is feeling nostalgic today. It's an odd feeling for her, because usually she's of the mind that nostalgia is something that only occupies the minds of boring people that have nothing better to do, but…there it is. Nostalgia, twisting its way up her slender limbs, settling upon her chest like a heavy sigh as she stretches her arms and sits upright in her bed.

And so, she swings her legs over the edge of her four-poster, canopy bed and slides her tiny, delicate feet into the silk slippers set on her floor. And then, she deigns to kneel down and reach under her bed for a gift box she's kept under there for years, the one with a secret compartment on the bottom.

But finds…nothing.

Empty space.

Their housekeeper, Mrs. Salisbury, would not dare to touch her things in such a manner, so she's not going to bother asking her where it might be.

Instead, she swings the door shut behind her and runs, down the hall, to the kitchen, her silk robe flying behind her. She runs as fast as her legs will carry her, fearing the worst.

"Daddy!" she shouts, breathlessly, hands on her hips, chest heaving, at the doorway, once she finally reaches the kitchen.

"Mary Rose?" Henry asks, not even bothering to look up from his newspaper, "is there something I can--"

"Where. Is. My. Gift. _Box_?!"

"Can you be more specific?" he inquires, cheekily, licking one of his fingers before turning a page.

"Under my bed. There was a gift box. It's not there. And it. Was. Important."

"If I recall it was empty," he says, brow furrowing, he finally looks up at his second eldest daughter to see her absolutely livid, her snowy complexion stained with blooming, red spots, "I made a run through the house and donated some things to Goodwill, a few days ago…if it was _that_ important, wouldn't you have noticed it missing?"

Mary Rose cradles her head in her hands.

"What's the matter? I had to do some spring cleaning."

_Oh. My. **God**. _

"You have. No idea. What you've-- I don't even have _time_ to tell you what you've done!" she screams, suddenly, biting a fist, she turns and runs, not bothering to change-- she might not have time to do so.

* * *

Mary Rose Tudor does not _run_. She does not _sweat_ , especially, but she does now, it pours down her porcelain forehead in rivulets as the sun beats down upon her brow. She runs down the sidewalk in her silk robe and nightgown and slippers, dodging dog-walkers and mothers with strollers and _finally_ she's reached the Brandon house.

So of course, of _course_ as she pauses to take a deep breath, Charles Brandon opens the front door and starts walking down the steps of his front porch.

Looking more handsome than anyone has a right to in sweatpants and a faded Superman t-shirt, but. _When doesn't he look more handsome than anyone has a right to, really_?

There's no times for civilities, so Mary Rose hopes to distract him with amusement, because, she knows, Charles Brandon _likes_ being amused.

"Hiya," she says, casually, shielding the mailbox with her frame, she opens the front of it, tucking her arm behind her back to do so.

" _That's_ a nice look," he says, tilting his head to the side, blue gaze sliding down her bare legs before snapping back to her face, his pouty mouth twisted into a smirk.

"Yeah, it's all the rage in France," she says, vaguely, then, sidesteps, a bundle of mail behind her back.

"Your brother's not here."

"Oh, he's not? Huh. Well…" she trails off, and stares at his chest, which is easy. It's level with her gaze (he's _quite_ tall, and she's…not), and the t-shirt he's wearing is actually _obscene_ (not that she's one to talk, in her current attire), in the way it stretches across his… _anyways_.  

Mary Rose starts to walk, backwards, down the sidewalk, away from him, straight-postured (gracefully, she might add…once you learn to ice skate backwards walking that way is quite easy in comparison), bundle of mail still clutched behind her back.

"Why are you being weird?" he asks, crossing muscular arms, "and why…" Charles continues, bends his head down and looks in the mailbox, "why is our mailbox open?"

_Shit._

"I'm not being _weird_! And…I don't know," she says, with an easy shrug of her shoulders, as he follows her down the sidewalk, only wearing socks himself, "maybe we have a theft problem in this neighborhood--"

"A theft problem named Mary Rose Tudor?"

"I--"

But he's already caught on, it's too late, he's run up and snatched the mail from her hands.

"This is a federal crime, you know," he drawls, shuffling through it, his hand pauses on a certain, light pink envelope and her heart drops.

"It's addressed to _me_ ," Charles says, flipping it over, " _aw_ , I never get mail…and…it's from _you_?"

"It wasn't supposed to get sent…please don't open--"

But he's already opened the back of the envelope, laughs and looks up at her in sheer amazement when a cloud of glitter covers his large, calloused hands upon doing so.

At this moment, Mary Rose curses Oprah, and her stupid talk show, and her _stupid_ segment on getting over crushes by writing them letters and addressing them and putting them in a box. And, also, she curses Jane Popincourt, who went to school sick that one day and got _her_ sick, because if Mary Rose wasn't sick that day she wouldn't have stayed home and deigned to watch Oprah in the first place.

And also, she curses her father, for being _pathetic_ and not knowing what to do with himself whenever her mother went on spa weeks with her sisters.

_'Spring cleaning'…. **Honestly**._ _What father does **that**?_

And _also_ , she curses whoever who was a) bright enough to find the secret compartment in the box and b) _stupid_ enough to think actually _sending_ a stamped and addressed letter would be a good idea _because_???? _Letters that are supposed to get sent aren't??? Put??? In secret?? Compartments???_

"'Dear Charles Brandon,'" he reads, the leftover mail, junk and a magazine already rolled up and shoved in his pocket, "'I hate you.' _That's_ rude."

"Give it back please, I wrote that ages ago, I don't even remember what--"

"'I hate your piercing blue eyes and I hate that you steal my beret every time I wear it.' Well, it wasn't a good look, Mary Rose."

"2007 was a dark time for fashion. Give me--"

"'I hate you and Henry and your weird, homoerotic friendship.' Does Henry know you feel this way?"

"Brandon, _please_ \--"

It's fruitless. Maybe if she were wearing heels she'd be able to reclaim her letter, but as it is he holds it above her grasp rather easily.

"'Growing your beards together is gay. It's a gay thing to do and I don't know how you two haven't realized this, yet. I hate that you're dating Lizzie Grey. She has a face like a horse and you have a face…" he looks down at her here and smiles, impishly, and laughs, before continuing, "'like a Greek god. It doesn't make sense for you to date her.'"

Mary Rose believes that this is the moment she will die. She's going to die of embarrassment, and she should've just left as soon as he started to read aloud, but for some reason she can't move. Even the birds singing in the background sound like they're laughing at her, just like he is.

"'I hate your long lashes. I hate your smooth legs and I think the fact that you shave them is also very gay.' _That's_ uncalled for. I was on the swim team!"

"Whatever," she scoffs, examining one of her manicured nails, "are you done yet or--"

"'I hate, most of all, that I think about you all the time and you don't even know it. I hate that you tug on my braids, still, even though I'm thirteen, not SIX, and I hate that you never compliment me when I wear a pretty dress. I hate that you haven't…'"

He trails off, but she doesn't know if he's still reading yet, because she's looking heavenwards, at the blue sky above, a plane, particularly (wishing very much she could be a passenger in it up _there_ rather than subjected to this humiliation down _here_ ), arms still crossed over her robe.

"'…even tried to kiss me yet. Because I am, in fact, you know, rather kissable. Love, Mary Rose Tudor.'"

"You done?" she asks, trying to school her tone into something that resembles bored, "or…?"

Charles hands her the letter and envelope both, and she takes them, puts them into the pocket of her robe, before walking back to her house.

"Oh, c'mon!" he calls out, "It's…it's flattering, really."

_'Flattering'_ _is_ , she thinks, as her eyelashes flutter and she feels tears well up, closing her dainty throat, _perhaps the ugliest word in the English language_.

"I'm too old for you," Charles says, and she hears footsteps behind her.

He's twenty one years old, goes to Yale with Henry Tudor the II, her older brother ( _I mean…do either of them really 'go' to college, though_ , she thinks,  _your attendance probably has to be better than **either** of theirs to be considered 'going'_ ), both of them are Seniors whilst she's a Senior in high school. So he's probably right, technically, but it stings, anyway.

"You're too _dumb_ for me," she sniffs, " _please_. You can barely _spell_."

"Hey!"

"Well, you _can't_."

And then she is lifted, suddenly, as if she has stopped walking entirely, but no, it's just that he's picked her up and literally slung her over his shoulder whilst she was mid-stride, like a sack of potatoes.

_Or a hostage, more like_.

"Put me down!" Mary Rose shouts, kicking, as he puts an arm under knees, her hands twined around his neck helping keep her upright, she is…

_Very_ close to his Grecian nose, his full mouth, his full head of dark, springy curls, tucked over and around his ears.

"Take it back," he whispers.

" _No_ ," Mary Rose responds, sticking her tongue out, then, "I've seen your handwriting, too. It's _atrociously_ illegible."

They're in plain sight, rows of houses on either side. She imagines curtains opening at the strange image of the Tudor princess and the Tudor prince's notorious best friend standing under an oak tree on the sidewalk, her in his arms like Persephone about to be brought to the Underworld.

Impulsively, she snakes a hand through his curls and tugs, is rewarded by a disbelieving grin and a flash of those beautiful, even, pearly whites.

"You're eighteen, right?" he asks, lowly.

"Yes," she lies, easily. _Seventeen, but eighteen soon, so who cares_?

"You're very kissable. You weren't wrong."

" _Mmm_ ," she says, rubbing her ski-slope nose against his, "continue."

"But I wasn't supposed to kiss you. I'm still not supposed to, probably, but--"

"Are you gonna do it or fucking n--"

_Not_.

Mary Rose finds that she doesn't hate his long lashes, so much. Not when they're closed because they're kissing her.

It's dorky to keep your eyes open when you're being kissed, and a _huge_ no-no according to both _Seventeen_ magazine and the sadly discontinued _Cosmo!Girl_ , but Mary Rose is not about to miss a second of this, especially not what he looks like during a kiss.

He keeps it chaste, respectful, and closed, much to her chagrin (she's imagined him as the hero with the billowing white shirt almost every time she's read a Harlequin novel, and so has vividly imagined _much_ more passionate embraces with him than _this_ ) before easing her down to the sidewalk.

"Still hate me?" he murmurs, hands in pockets, lashes lowered, scratching at the nape of his neck.

"Yes," Mary Rose says, jutting her chin out, "call me when you've caught up with the _French_ style of doing _that_."

And with that she turns and runs back home, her old letter clutched to her chest, wondering the whole time if he's watching her as she disappears from view.

* * *

 

(He is).


End file.
